Create an official Jupyter Mastodon account

[choldgraf]

Many open source communities and projects are migrating to Mastodon right now. As part of that process, several organizations are defining "official" accounts in a Mastodon server, so that others know where is the source of truth for communications from that organization.

Several examples of "official" accounts in Mastodon are provided by @krassowski here:

• https://discourse.jupyter.org/t/official-mastodon-account-s/16688/8?u=choldgraf

Given the high-visibility nature of Jupyter, I think it's important that we provide this source of truth in Mastodon to avoid confusion about where our communications are coming from.

However, there's an open question about which Mastodon server Jupyter should use, there's been some discussion of this in the discourse thread:

• https://discourse.jupyter.org/t/official-mastodon-account-s/16688

Given that we don't yet know if there will be an "official" Python projects server, and given that it is relatively easy to transition to new servers if you wish, I propose we take the following path:

Proposal

• Wait for three weeks to see if an "official" Python or Scientific Python server arises that we can use.
• After December 19th:
• If it does, then create a projectjupyter@<this-new-server.org> account
• If not, then create an official Jupyter social media account on fosstodon.org (this is the server many other major projects have used)
• Document it as our official Jupyter account, and add a rel="me" link to our home page to this account.

Current state as of Dec 21 2022

There has been significant discussion and some actions on this, so I am summarizing the current state of things below:

• We discussed this topic in the Discourse thread linked above in Nov
• This issue was opened ~3 weeks ago with a specific proposal for using the fosstodon.org server
• Initially the EC suggested waiting on making an account until the new EC had been formed, had created a social media team, and delegated this decision to that team.
• The EC reconsidered this decision in their office hours meeting and agreed to allow creating an account on fosstodon about two days ago. Create an official Jupyter Mastodon account #146 (comment)
• This account was created and linked from jupyter.org, though not announced from an official jupyter account: Add Mastodon to Jupyter web site jupyter.github.io#710 (comment)
• Yesterday some folks expressed concern that fosstodon.org is an english-only server, a point that had not been discussed before, and recommended moving the account immediately or shutting it down.
• @choldgraf has deleted his twitter/mastodon posts about this, given the uncertainty of whether we'll use this moving forward.
• There's a PR open here to revert the jupyter.org changes: Revert "Add Mastodon to Jupyter web site" jupyter.github.io#711
• We are now awaiting the EC's decision on how to move forward.

[manics]

Is Jupyter still a Python project, or has it grown beyond that? I'm mostly involved with the Python components so I can't really tell!

[choldgraf]

My feeling is that technically, it is much more than python. But culturally, it overlaps more with the scientific python community much more than any other major open source community.

That said, I just noted the scientific python server because I know those conversations are happening. But I am happy to go with a different proposal in the name of moving forward. It's more important that there's an official account somewhere than if it exists on the perfect server.

[krassowski]

My feeling is that it has a reach and aspires much beyond Python. Since both Python and R foundation are just on Fosstodon this is what I believe is the best course of action as of today. Julia has its own server.

Agree that any server is better than no presence at all, but for the same reason I believe Fosstodon (or floss.social) now is better than waiting (accounts can be moved around easily).

[minrk]

Following Python itself (and other projects like pandas) to Fosstodon and adding the rel=me now makes sense to me. Migrating to a 'scientific python' instance, if one is launched, could make sense, too. I've already migrated servers once, and it's no big deal.

[JasonWeill]

We discussed this at the governance meeting this morning. We are still in the process of electing the new Executive Council (voting closes on Sunday December 4). The new EC should work with NumFOCUS to coordinate a social media strategy, wither on Fosstodon or another instance. We will follow up on this at a later EC meeting. Thank you all for your engagement!

[Carreau]

When creating the Jupyter account, please also create an IPythonDev one, and add credentials to the onepassword.

[choldgraf]

@jweill-aws to clarify your statement, is this the current state of things?

The governance meeting team concluded that nobody should create this account until the Executive Council has been created, then created a social media strategy, and then defines a policy about Mastodon accounts.

If so I will hold off on creating anything. Also just a note that there is now at least one account that is called jupyter on Mastodon.

[JasonWeill]

@choldgraf Yes, we just had our EC election, and we are in the process of spinning up the EC.

The EC's office hours are scheduled for Mondays at 10:00 Pacific (18:00 UTC, currently), and I encourage you to bring this up at that time, if you're available.

[choldgraf]

I'm usually not available at that time, as it's 7pm in France and I'm on baby duty then. Anyway, I don't think there's any information that I'd share in that meeting that isn't already documented in this issue.

I'll leave this open so that the executive council can decide what to do with it. But feel free to close if you wish.

[JasonWeill]

I usually attend the office hours, so I can continue to drive this. On Dec 6, 2022, at 12:13, Chris Holdgraf ***@***.***> wrote:  I'm usually not available at that time, as it's 7pm in France and I'm on baby duty then. Anyway, I don't think there's any information that I'd share in that meeting that isn't already documented in this issue. I'll leave this open so that the executive council can decide what to do with it. But feel free to close if you wish. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#146 (comment)>, or unsubscribe<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AWHV4GD3J4UEECPCLWFZULTWL6M4PANCNFSM6AAAAAASNFJTKU>. You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[Carreau]

The governance meeting team concluded that nobody should create this account until the Executive Council has been created, then created a social media strategy, and then defines a policy about Mastodon accounts.

As a note, there is a difference between creating/using and registering the name.

Is the decision definitely about registering/reserving the name, or more about using the media ? We already have a number of other social media accounts (and domains) that have been registered but do not display any jupyter-related name/url/avatar but are under our control just in case.

[choldgraf]

Agreed - in my opinion jupyter should define a "source of truth" handle, even if it intends to never use it, just so that it's clear what is official and what is not. This would be a very low effort action.

[krassowski]

What is the status here? A ship has somewhat already sailed. Do we really need a months-long process to setup a handle?

• if we wanted to give users heads up from Twitter account that there is an official account on Mastodon it is too late since Twitter started blocking links to Mastodon (yesterday?)
  • this was important consideration for setting up account early since large fraction of followers are passive (unless they are hard-core users/developers they will likely not remember that they had followed Jupyter on the other platform) and needed a nudge
• there is still time to to set up an account and there is still benefit in doing it earlier than later (users with interest in specific news sources will actively seek them just after setting up account and less so once well settled and happy with their newsfeed, and there are still swathes of users migrating)

[JasonWeill]

@krassowski It's been 3 weeks since this issue was opened, not months, and the request also coincided with the transition of governance to the new Executive Council. As Twitter's capricious overlord continues to make decisions that adversely affect the platform's viability, I agree that setting up a presence on Mastodon would benefit the project. I intend to join the Jupyter EC office hours at 10:00 US/Pacific today to bring this topic up again.

[JasonWeill]

I have submitted a request for an official Jupyter account on FOSStodon, using an official Jupyter e-mail account. Once this is created, I can update Jupyter's web site to link to our Jupyter accounts so that they show up using Mastodon's green-check verification. Note that I'll be away for the holidays. Also note that FOSStodon's action button is "Add to Waitlist," not "Register Account," so our account requires approval to be created. Thank you for your patience.

[JasonWeill]

https://fosstodon.org/@Jupyter is now online. I can update the related PR to only add <link> tags, but not link to this account, since it has only a basic profile at the moment and is not being actively used yet.

[JasonWeill]

Additional to-dos (I'm OK if we open separate issues for them)

• Use an app like fedifinder to scan all of @ProjectJupyter's Twitter follows for Mastodon accounts, and then follow them on Mastodon
• Update @ProjectJupyter's Twitter bio to mention @[email protected] (this is no longer a bannable offense on Twitter)
• Come up with a strategy to cross-post content on Twitter and Mastodon (probably requires more discussion)

[JasonWeill]

@Carreau I have requested @IPythonDev on Fosstodon; credentials are on 1Password.

[choldgraf]

Thanks @jweill-aws for doing this work 👍

I believe these are some follow ups we need to accomplish as well:

• Re-add the jupyter.org link to the Mastodon page, so that it re-checks the link for the rel="me"
• Document this Mastodon account (and the diff between @jupyter and @projectjupyter) as part of a broader documentation effort around our social media (but that probably more medium-to-long-term)

[JasonWeill]

We are "verified"!

[SylvainCorlay]

Fosstodon prohibits posts in other languages than English, which I think is not great. In the past, we have promoted blog posts in other languages on social media.

[JasonWeill]

I agree that the English-only rule is not ideal for us. One advantage of Mastodon is that we can move our account to another server if this rule becomes problematic. Alternatively, if Fosstodon's moderation team expands to be more multilingual, they may be more receptive to posts in other languages.

[krassowski]

Given the tagline includes "please open issues on GitHub" I would suggest we add two links to the two GitHub repositories which we actually do monitor (in weekly triage meetings):

• https://github.com/jupyterlab/jupyterlab
• https://github.com/jupyter/notebook

This is because we see users opening issues in irrelevant repositories such us jupyterlab-git (because how SEO works when you search for "jupyterlab github") or the documentation repository (https://github.com/jupyter/jupyter.github.io/issues, probably because docs build often link back to source github).

For context, Mastodon allows up to 4 links and proposal still leaves one empty. The list of links could be revised later, especially if an assistant github template was created (we could use template selector to link to multiple repositories including other subprojects. Maybe we could do this straight away, like creating an issues repo with github template which does not allow opening issues but just redirects to other repos as needed).

[JasonWeill]

@krassowski Perhaps a link to the community page might be better? There are a lot of reasons why a person/org might need to contact Jupyter, and a GitHub issue might not work well for everyone.

[krassowski]

The community page is already indirectly linked via the main website. My concerns is only that the tagline points to "github" without providing a link and users may end up lost.

[SylvainCorlay]

Fosstodon prohibits posts in other languages than English

I agree that the English-only rule is not ideal for us.

I am kinda bummed by this pick. So it is completely forbidden for ProjectJupyter to post content in my mother tongue. There is a lot of content about/on Jupyter in French (and probably in other languages) that we should be able to promote. I think we should take down the fosstodon account and move to another server.

[JasonWeill]

@SylvainCorlay I looked at the last two years' worth of @ProjectJupyter tweets, including replies, and found that they were all written in English (although I did not look at the links from those tweets). The most recent non-English Tweet I could find was from August 12, 2020, in Turkish. (That tweet was part of a small thread about localization, and consisted of the same content in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Finnish, and Turkish, so it would likely be consistent with Fosstodon's moderation policy.)

In addition, despite its stated policy, Fosstodon is not wholly in English; this post from earlier today is in French, for example. The rule is meant to facilitate moderating potentially controversial or disputed content, which I don't expect Project Jupyter to post.

[SylvainCorlay]

"Do not post in languages other than English" is pretty clear. I think that forbidding explicitely other languages does not work well with our values with respect to inclusivity.

[minrk]

I'll just add that migrating to a new instance is a very low impact action (followers stay with you, etc.). I've already done it once and nothing noticeable changed. The only thing you lose is post history, and we aren't going to have anything to lose there. So there's a lot less inertia in a name than on other systems.

So I'm 👍 to:

• leaving the account there, not deleting it
• making it clear that it's just a placeholder for now as @jasongrout described,
• when we settle on a location, if it's different (as I agree it should be if the policy is not resolved as the admins suggest it may be shortly, thanks @rkdarst!), make the first account an alias to the new one.

[SylvainCorlay]

I sent an email to fosstodon admins asking about multi-language, and got a reply saying that with mastodon 4 translation, it's possible and coming in a few days.

Wow, that is amazing news!

[JasonWeill]

@minrk @jasongrout Thanks for your responses while I was out on vacation Dec. 21–28. I have updated the Jupyter Fosstodon account to have a bio indicating that it's not in active use. I've also removed the banner and profile images, to avoid confusion for now. We should discuss our social strategy further. Of note, this rule of Fosstodon's suggests that we are expected to actively engage with people using the Jupyter account, not just post automatically, and we should monitor our @-mentions:

Do not use automated tools to toot without participating in the community. It is fine to post with an automated tool so long as you are an active member of the Fosstodon community and respond to replies you receive here. Unmonitored accounts that post automatically are not acceptable.

(Note that "toot" is a term previously used by Mastodon to mean "post"; the latter term is now official)

[SylvainCorlay]

I sent an email to fosstodon admins asking about multi-language, and got a reply saying that with mastodon 4 translation, it's possible and coming in a few days. They would have changed the sooner, but the translation required an additional service to be run which they have been building over the last few days (currently testing).

Do you know of any update or reference on this?

[rkdarst]

I don't have any update. My only reference is private email but right after a server-wide announcement was made that mentions the translation service coming, so there is some independent reaction.

I'd recommend sending own email to ask if you are curios, or message the people in the announcement (@[email protected] or @[email protected]). It would seem reasonable to even ask about what the expectation for organization accounts is... but I have very little personal interest here, the accounts work well for my organizations...

[SylvainCorlay]

Why not using hachyderm or a self-hosted instance just for Jupyter accounts?

[jasongrout]

I would love to have a numfocus instance, since that is the code of conduct and moderation body we've already agreed to and community we are a part of.

[SylvainCorlay]

I would love to have a numfocus instance, since that is the code of conduct and moderation body we've already agreed to and community we are a part of.

Good point. Let's look at what's been going on in the infrastructure discussion.

[JasonWeill]

If we're still looking for a new home for Jupyter on Mastodon, Medium (which already hosts the Jupyter Blog) just launched its own Mastodon instance, with the same code of conduct as its blogging service: https://me.dm/

[JasonWeill]

While Fosstodon has still not relaxed its English-only rule, I would still like for us to have an official Jupyter Mastodon account, with all new microcontent posted to both Twitter and Mastodon, as a precaution against future Twitter outages and other challenges associated with the platform.

[minrk]

Should we go with the medium instance, then? Moving instances is very low impact, so we can move if/when we find a more comfortable home like a numfocus instance.

[JasonWeill]

Medium's Mastodon instance requires a paid Medium membership ($50 per year) to create an account, per their docs: https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/12101044403095-About-me-dm-Medium-s-Mastodon-instance

[blink1073]

Another option is hachyderm, which supports Open Source Accounts, is multilingual friendly, and their stated values are prosocial.

[astrojuanlu]

Lots of projects set up shop on Hachyderm, it's a good choice.

[JasonWeill]

I agree that Hachyderm may be a good Mastodon instance for us. Their sign-up page has rules that seem to be in accord with our Code of Conduct, and I didn't find any restrictions that would dissuade Jupyter from being there.

[blink1073]

As of today, Fosstodon has lifted the restriction: "This rule was revoked as of August 8th, 2023 by a vote from our community.". https://hub.fosstodon.org/why-fosstodon-is-english-only/

They also posted this announcement in the home feed:

"Following a discussion with our patrons, the policy requiring posts to be in English on Fosstodon has been removed. The moderation team will utilize available translation technologies for moderation purposes. However,
we may request community support for languages not supported by our translation software, or where context isn't well understood. We appreciate your patience as we incorporate this change into our moderation practices."

[minrk]

hachyderm seems like a good choice right now.

[JasonWeill]

Any update on the creation of an official Mastodon account for Jupyter?

[blink1073]

Not as of yet, that will be among the first orders of business for the Jupyter Media Strategy Working Group, for which we are actively writing a charter.

[blink1073]

I have made a request for a Specialized Hachyderm account: hachyderm/community#488

[blink1073]

We are live! https://hachyderm.io/@ProjectJupyter

[JasonWeill]

Congrats! Blog post when? 😉

[astrojuanlu]

And would be nice to add a link at the bottom of jupyter.org :)

[blink1073]

Done: jupyter/jupyter.github.io#742